Champigny sur Veude was our next stop and it did not disappoint!
On arrival into the tiny village you turn the bend and see a HUGE chapel appear infront of you. It’s in the grounds of a chateau and the note on the gate says “ring the bell for a tour”. So we did.
The caretaker of the chateau let us in and we were treated to a private tour of the chapel and chateau.
The chapel is one of the last 5 surviving Sainte Chapelle’s in France, and has 10 beautiful stained glass windows.
The chateau is actually built in the original chateau stables – the original enormous chateau was destroyed by Cardinal Richelieu when he took over the lands, luckily the Pope banned him from destroying the beautiful chapel. We got to see some of the ground floor rooms in the chateau, and thought how lucky we are that we’re in a van and not having to clean the 400 square metres of floor in the chateau!
The chateau, chapel and land are owned buy a family from the USA, we were lucky they were away so we could go on the tour.
An accidental stop in a town we hadn’t planned to go through turned out to be one of our most memorable stops.